


Clandestine Company

by DuaeCat



Category: Star Wars: A New Dawn - John Jackson Miller, Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 06:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5775847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuaeCat/pseuds/DuaeCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While nothing could surpass the mess of her first assignment as Captain, Rae Sloane's life is hardly uneventful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clandestine Company

**Author's Note:**

> This is a trade fic for PileOfSith on tumblr. This will eventually be Rae/Vidian.

Rae Sloane sometimes took the time to look back on her past naiveté and marvel over how far she’d come. The Imperial Academy did its best, of course, and for the vast majority of those it graduated it was more than enough to prepare them for the tasks ahead of them serving the Empire. For those with greater ambitions it could leave them with a dangerously over-exaggerated sense of competency in the face of the unknown.

There was little to be done about it. Had someone come up to her shortly after graduating and told her she’d have to deal with half the things she’d encountered as an Imperial officer, she’d have likely laughed in their face at the absurdity of it. She’d been captain on the Vindicated for less than a decade and she had decided the only thing she could count on was a healthy dose of cynicism. Part of it was that regulations sounded perfectly straightforward, until they weren’t, and then it became clear why it was better to have a human in charge than some droid incapable of properly accessing the situation. She’d seen the disaster first hand with some of the low level non-human technicians who’d first signed up for cybernetic enhancement. Things had gone excellently and efficiently, until a corridor had to be sectioned off for minor repairs. Even the most rigidly trained trooper was intelligent enough to see the barriers and realize they needed to find an alternate route, had they forgotten about the closing. The technicians on the other hand had run right into the barrier, stubbornly milling around and causing all sorts of problems until someone realized no one had bothered to update the programmed in routes to give them an alternative path to and from their shift locations.

Now the protocols had been updated and safeguards put in to hopefully prevent another such incident. That was another childish idea she’d shaken off years ago, the conviction that a perfect system could exist. If you got caught up in the idea of perfection you stagnated. No, it was better to expect that everything would fail and be the one with the backup plan. After the fact people rarely cared what the problem had been, only that it was fixed. She supposed that others might have figured that out and been tempted to capitalize on it, creating their own problems to fix. Indeed she’d encountered people like that before, who seemed to lurch from one emergency to the next with seemingly blissful unwillingness to acknowledge that they were constantly setting up the next one. Captain Sloane, however, had a great deal of faith in the universe to provide more than enough problems to keep her busy for a lifetime.

“Captain, a ship matching the parameters you listed has just requested clearance to land at the port. Should I flag them for a search?”

“Do it.” Sloane ordered, calling up the ship’s information on her screen. One of the more challenging problems the universe had gifted her with was a crime syndicate active in her patrol. It was hardly unusual, and she was far from the first Captain to hope to gain prestige by going after pirates and criminals, but this one seemed a little better organized than most, and more irritating. They handled the usual illicit goods, drugs, high tariff items, and whatnot of most pirates, but they seemed to take particular delight in thumbing their nose at the Empire in more irritating ways. False permits, false inspections, false reports, false identification. Businesses would pop up entirely above board, approved, everything in order and recorded. Except if one dug a little deeper they would find that no one supposedly involved in filling out the paperwork had ever actually done such a thing.

She had uncovered it, she was embarrassed to ever admit even to herself, entirely by luck. One of the ships licensed to carry live cargo had engine trouble and was clogging the shipping lane. While she was reviewing the report the name of the license officer jumped out at her. He had the same name as a cousin of hers, and while it was entirely meaningless her brain always latched onto that little fact and made her take notice when it came up in the reports. It was an irritation that served her well this time. He had been sick for a full week the month the license was supposedly issued and she’d remembered it instead of dismissing it as the unimportant paperwork it rightfully was. A check and she discovered he had indeed been sick the week the license claimed it had been written.

Forgeries and fakes had always been a problem, she was sure. Some people just delighted in flaunting the law with no consideration for why the law had even been made. People always assumed they were too clever to get caught in the pitfalls the laws were designed to prevent, and were inevitably the first to complain when they were terribly wrong. People bitterly complained about the difficulties involved in getting a proper license, for, say, selling power converters, but would whine and moan and demand action when the chunk of metal they bought off a shady cart in some dark alley didn’t work properly. The very idea that the laws had been made for their own good was a little beyond most people.

The forgeries they usually encountered, however, were pathetic. A flashy printed bit of flimsiplast might work to bluff someone, but there were checks in place to prevent things from becoming a problem. The possibility of fakes out there with no obvious means of detection was… worrying. She wasn’t entirely certain of the best way to proceed and she was sitting on that particular bit of information until a better time. Officially she was only doing her duty in trying to catch smugglers and pirates.

It had been what motivated her to change the search parameters slightly. If whoever was providing this criminal group with perfect fake business cover knew the red flags they used to inspect transport ships they would be making sure to hit as few of them as possible. Rae justified it to herself that everyone else investigating the criminal activity would be following procedure, if she was wrong about this then someone else would get it done the old way and she would chalk it up as no great win, but no loss ether. She had concentrated on ships that wouldn’t raise red flags, but would still be capable of smuggling illegal goods, and would be obtainable and not stand out. Most smugglers tended to favor mid-sized ships with small crews, high firepower and fast speed to escape confrontation. Her criminals would never touch something that flashy. So far, true, she’d pulled a dozen transports and personal vessels with no sign anything was amiss, but other than a delay for the ships chosen for inspection there was no harm done. If they couldn’t afford a delay, that was their own poor planning.

“Captain, the ship is secured, but they said we need to make things quick. They have a shipment of powdered Varg Root and even under optimal storage conditions the faster it gets to processing the better.” The call came over the internal com system, Rae pursed her lips.

“Let them know I’ll be down there to inspect things personally.” She stood, heading towards the lift.

It was far too soon to get hopeful, but it certainly warranted further attention. Varg Root was incredibly useful in a number of medical compounds, but also infamously finicky about being transported in a pure form. You shipped it quick, you processed it locally, or you spent the extra effort to compound it to something inert and then refined it once more after transport. It also made an excellent excuse to hurry inspection, since it was expensive and a ruined shipment would have buyer and seller and transporter all angry and ready to pass blame. While in the lift, she took the time to call up information on known Varg root refineries. It never hurt to be more informed than people expected.

 

* * *

 

Rae Sloane held the testing device in hand like a prize as she faced the crew of the transport ship.

“I heard that you’re in a hurry to get out of here and on your way, Captain….?”

“Ryker.” A middle aged human male stepped forward, speaking gruffly. “I already handed over my inventory sheet and that we were cleared for transport of eight kilos of powdered Varg root. If we don’t get on our way soon, Wayside Medical is not going to be happy with us.”

“I understand, and I assure you my workers will do a very… efficient job. But I am curious as to the rush?”

“Ma’am, I don’t know if you know this, I’m sure you can ask one of your workers, but Varg root is incredibly unstable. The longer it’s in storage the more likely it is to suddenly experience a chemical decay that renders it useless.” Ryder spoke in that ever so polite but condescending tone Sloane was more than familiar with. She’d been on the receiving end of it from people far more powerful and practiced in it than Ryker.

“I know it’s unstable. I also know this planet is not on any direct route between any of Wayside Medical’s processing centers and Varg root refineries. If time is such an issue, why go out of your way?” Sloane normally hated wasting time when she already knew the answer, but the lies people gave when they thought you believed them were often more educational than the ones everyone knew was a lie.

“Quicker refueling station, the direct ones have a wait. You save an hour, but waste two or three waiting in line.” Ryker said, as thought it was obvious.

Rae was slightly impressed, either someone had given him a good answer or he’d come up with it on his own. On the surface it made sense.

“Of course I didn’t think I’d end up wasting more time over some bureaucratic nonsense.” Ryder continued, confidently.

“I suppose it does seem like wasted time. Of course I suppose I’m going to deliver some good news. You don’t have any reason to rush, your Varg root is in a stable compound with sodium bicarbonate. Under standard storage conditions it will remain as it is with no degradation or loss of value indefinitely. We could take weeks, even months to search your ship and while Wayside Medical might be a little unhappy with the delay, I’m sure they’ll be very interested in why a ship supposedly rushing unstable pure Varg root is instead carrying a less valuable compound of it.” Sloane waved to the stormtroopers standing at attention nearby and they closed in on the crew.

Ryker stepped closer, his confidence rattled. “I’m sure there’s been some mistake…”

“I’m sure, and until we sort this out you’ll be taken into custody. I’m quite certain you understand. If it’s nothing more than an inventory mismatch you’ll be fined and free to go once your ship has been thoroughly searched for any more discrepancies.” Rae smiled sharply at the look of utter confusion on the man’s face as the binders were slapped on his wrists. Even if this turned out to be a false lead, she still got a great deal of satisfaction in her work. 


End file.
